Richard Arrington

Commissioner Tex Schramm of the World League of American Football said today that Birmingham was a "clear choice" to be one of the 12 cities in the intercontinental league, scheduled to begin play in March, 1991. Schramm also said the league, contrary to the old World Football League and United States Football League, is projected for "the long range because of its association with the National Football League."

The founder of Shoal Creek apologized for his remarks about the absence of blacks at the exclusive Shelby County golf club, but some black leaders questioned whether he went far enough. In a letter released Wednesday night, Hall Thompson urged a rapid healing of any wounds that could scar the Professional Golfers' Assn. Championship, which will be held at Shoal Creek in August.

The city's black mayor said today that he expects the Shoal Creek country club to take in black members within the next year, but that the action may not stop protesters from picketing the PGA Championship at the club next month.

A fourth corporation has pulled its commercials from the telecast of the PGA Championship at Shoal Creek due to questions about the club's racial policies, and a civil rights leader is threatening to boycott next year's Masters tournament at Augusta, Ga., over the same issue. Another civil rights leader said he wants more than paper promises that Shoal Creek will take in black members before he agrees to call off protests during the Aug. 9-12 PGA Championship at the private club.

The founder of Shoal Creek, site of the 1990 PGA Championship, said the country club cannot be pressured into accepting blacks as members. Hall Thompson, 67, said club members have not allowed any black members because "that's just not done in Birmingham." Thompson's remarks Wednesday followed a city councilman's criticism of the club's policy and a call to cut municipal funding from the tournament Aug. 6-12. "Bringing up this issue will just polarize the community . . .

Ugliness blights John Guare's "Landscape of the Body." The characters' prettiest dreams are blotted out by horrible incidents that seem to arise out of the atmosphere they breathe. Some of these events are so incongruous as to be funny, yet it's a kind of comedy that's best appreciated from the safety and serenity of the afterlife--which is where one of the characters happens to live. Guare's writing is as littered as his landscape.

Black leaders and white Shoal Creek Country Club officials apparently can see the green again after plans for the 1990 PGA Championship sliced into a thicket of racial discrimination claims. An apology from Shoal Creek founder Hall Thompson and assurances that the all-white country club will not discriminate in its membership or guest policies drew commendations Thursday from black leaders.

The University of Alabama, which plays its home football games in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, might build a stadium south of Bessemer, President Joab Thomas said last week. He said the stadium, which would be near the interchange of Interstates 459, 20 and 59, could be used by the Crimson Tide and by the Birmingham Stallions of the United States Football League.

A key civil rights spokesman said today he was "very optimistic" an agreement was near that would lead him to call off protests during next week's PGA Championship. The Rev. Abraham Woods, Birmingham president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said, "it seems as if we may be able to put this thing behind us." Woods made his statement hours before civil rights leaders and Shoal Creek officials planned an announcement on the matter.

It's the stuff of hackneyed adventure fiction. A creature rises out of the murky depths to attack hapless seafarers tottering about in their frail boats. Haven't we heard this somewhere? Not this time, you haven't. Believe it or not--and some marine experts have a hard time believing it--a whale damaged a 22-foot fishing boat and killed the boat's skipper in the waters off Central California this week. The way it happened is almost as astonishing as what happened.